Cuban Biographer presents to Spanish students

Cuban author Alina Garcia-Lapuerta delivered a taste of Latin American literature to Spanish IV and AP Spanish students on Sept. 5 with a presentation of her recent biography. Her work, La Belle Creole: The Cuban Countess Who Captivated Havana, Madrid and Pari, chronicles the life of Mercedes Santa Cruz y Montalvo, known as Cuba’s first female author.Though she moved to the United States at the age of three, Garcia-Lapuerta was born in Havana and she uses Cuba as one of the main focuses of the book.“I discovered her [Mercedes Santa Cruz y Montalvo], read about her life, and I found it very interesting and found that people did not know a lot about her,” Garcia-Lapuerta said. “I wrote the story because I wanted people to learn about her and what she accomplished in her life.”

Santa Cruz y Montalvo was born into an aristocratic Creole Cuban family in Havana before moving to Madrid and, later, Paris. When she returned to Havana she wrote a novel about her travels, as well as two historical accounts of Cuba.

Like any other biography, La Belle Creole: The Cuban Countess Who Capitvated Havana, Madrid and Paris required a lot of research. “The responsibility was big to make this biography because you are writing a whole novel about someone’s life to teach people everything about that one person. You need to be careful when presenting the information,” Garcia-Lapuerta said.

“I would like people to learn a bit about that time and history [in Cuba] and I want them to learn about Mercedes’s life,” Garcia-Lapuerta said.

Cuban Biographer presents to Spanish students was last modified: February 1st, 2017 by Jordan Glover